Lufaise Meadows

Neyla and I went back out to Tahrongi Canyon to finish the powerleveling job, but this time we took one of the new experience points bracelets which give nice bonuses for the kills. Neyla was chaining dhalmels for plenty of points (we eventually moved to Yagudo and Goblins to accomodate a Beastmaster who was using the dhalmels as pets) and it didn't take long to get Neyla's Thief to Lv. 15.

Tonight's Promyvion-Holla run went well, and Veresko guided us with very few problems. The situation became tense on the third floor when we fought two fake Memory Recepticles before finding the correct one. We got aggro once or twice, but we were never bogged down in a place we couldn't handle.

Bugards are among the new monsters found in Lufaise Meadows.

The boss fight was a pain in my taru ass. Its special move sleeps everyone and curses them, so Veresko was passing out Poison Potions and Holy Water in advance. To add to the fun, it has the ability to draw off someone's buffs and use them. That meant I couldn't use Protect or Shell on the party, and Regen was a big no-no. I was reduced to using Cure II over and over again. If there's one thing a White Mage hates, it's being a Cure-bot.

The funniest part? Delroth used a Scroll of Reraise before the fight started. Sure enough, he got killed during the battle. Instead of allowing himself to be raised, he went into panic mode and homepointed back to Jeuno. In his defense, he was drunk as hell. It's a shame, too. If he'd stayed he would've cleared the run because we killed the boss.

Promyvion-Holla was the last of the three zones I needed, and I found myself transported to Lufaise Meadows for the first time. A mix of new and old creatures were wandering around the field when I arrived, but they all checked Too Weak and I was in no danger of being attacked. I sat down to rest and to wait for Veresko to come find me and lead me to the Tavnazian Safehold, an underground city where survivors of the attack shown in the game's opening movie went to live.

Zoner turned up, and the three of us went into the safehold. They guided me from one NPC to the next so I could quest for the map and gain access to the aquaducts. I looked around for a few minutes -- the waterfall is spectacular -- and finally had to log out for the night. I look forward to exploring the region later when I have time.

Pain

Neyla cut a swathe of death through Sarutabaruta and Tahrongi Canyon.

With a run at Promyvion-Holla scheduled for the evening, Neyla and I decided to use the early afternoon to powerlevel his Thief job in Tahrongi Canyon. He's trying to get it to 15 for the Treasure Hunter ability so he can sub it when he goes farming for items.

I just stood there and threw out Cure II while he killed everything on the way to the canyon. Once we arrived, he killed mandies, sprouts and rarabs in a steady stream with a few goblins thrown in for good measure. It took awhile, but he finally got it to Level 13. By that time we were ready to head back to Windurst to prepare for the Promy run.

Yeah, it kinda sucked. We didn't even make it to the spire. Veresko is normally our guide, but this time he went as a Ninja and left it to Delroth (as RNG) to get us through. It's not really Delroth's fault, but he has little experience in these zones and didn't know what to expect. We got bogged down in some ethereal copse of trees and were swamped by angry monsters. It was a complete party wipeout.

We're going to try again tomorrow.

Tonberry Love Songs

I was going to be responsible. I was going to level my Black Mage today so I wouldn't have a gimpy subjob and could safely walk around with my stats showing and not be embarrassed. I got my gear, switched jobs and was looking for a party in Jeuno when Caerloc sent me a /tell.

"You should level White Mage. Black Mage sucks," he said.

"I want to, which is why I'm doing Black Mage," I said. "My sub is underleveled."

He just laughed at that. "So you have five less MP and can't use Water II? Who cares? Come level White Mage with us."

"That's seriously tempting," I said. After a short pause to reel in a Black Sole, I said "Alright, fuck it. I'm in."

That's how I ended up leveling White Mage with Caerloc, Dakko, Rorian and Onaule from Notorious Hunters again. They asked about Malystryxx, but he didn't pop online until after we'd added a Black Mage. Luckily, we were able to convince the BLM he really should try to get his testimony for another run at Maat and replaced him with Maly.

Halifirien's milkshake brings all the tonberries to the yard.

We tried partying in Newton Movalpolos because it would be something new and different, but it also turned out to be a disaster because those bastard bugbears and goblins are hard as hell to kill. After the first Chain 5 we were all thinking "You know, Bibiki Bay doesn't sound so bad." The xp flow increased significantly after that. I would've stayed a lot longer (I got to within 5k of Lv. 67) but I had Mission 9-2 stuff scheduled.

Neyla, Kateverlasting and I needed to travel to the Quicksand Caves and to the Temple of Uggalepih to retreive parts of a song. We hit the caves first because it seemed like the easier of the two. We didn't have any problems getting through the weight sensors on the doors. Kat got aggro from a Spelunking Sabotender when we dropped down one of the cliffs and I was having an "Oh, shit!" moment until I examined the thing and saw it was going to be easy to kill.

The temple song was trickier. None of us have maps for that place (a situation I want to remedy at some point) and got lost the first time. We escaped out and tried again, and this time we got to the locked door we needed. Neyla had farmed a key earlier, so we went in and found the clickable ??? near the bookshelf. One of the tonberries attacked me as soon as my cutscene was over, but we were having fun fighting it.

It used the Throat Stab move on Neyla and took out 99% of his health, but again it wasn't really a problem until the second tonberry walked over to join the fun. That's when we decided to use Escape. We returned to Windurst to speak to Ajido-Marujido and get ourselves ready for the final battle in the Full Moon Fountain next week.

I finished out by teleporting to Xarcabard to see the first Dynamis cutscene and then traveling back to Jeuno for the second. Dynamis is a parallel world where Lv. 75 players go to die while trying to obtain their uber-gear. I'm not going near that place for a long time.